Andy Lees “benched” says sources

There have been some speculation about Andy Lees sudden transfer from being the head of Windows Phone. Now the Verge reports, from an internal unnamed source, that it was definitely a demotion.

The reasons seem legion. Andy is being blamed for being abrasive with OEM partners, alienating companies like Motorola (who they approached for Project Pink KIN hardware but was barred from getting involved in software, and HTC by teaming up with LG in a â€œstrategic partnershipâ€ which went no where), being overly confident in market share gains by Windows Phone and a number 3 position in the market in the face of a reality which is very different, and allowing Nokia to call the Lumia 800 â€œthe first real windows phoneâ€ to the chagrin of the other OEMs.

He has de facto been replaced by Terry Myerson who is apparently well liked in the company and who at a all-hands meeting is quoted as saying "we’re at zero percent market share for all practical purposes, and if we could get to ten percent, that’d be great."

We have read elsewhere that Terry has been running much of the engineering of Windows Phone in any case, and so nothing much will change. According to the Verge however it seems the main change is from having an perhaps overconfident booster in charge to a realist, which, as we speculated here, may mean a change in Microsoftâ€™s strategy going forward.